Sunday, November 8, 2009

Much to report!

My friend Julie got married last night, and we had a terrific time. She looked just beautiful walking down the aisle,


and the party that followed the ceremony was tons of fun. We saw our friend Amy--who we hadn't seen in years and years--and met her lovely husband. They're both veterinarians in Michigan. I actually got Trevor to dance with me, though I didn't get any photos of it. And the whole night was a success!

The night before that was an opening at Trevor's gallery. The artist, Gregory Scott, incorporates video with painting for quite an interesting effect. Jen, Trevor's co-worker, snapped this lovely picture of me and T.



And then I got one of Jen and Trevor behind their desk:



I enjoyed the pieces but didn't stick around for too long. I jetted off to Border's on State Street for my first "Write-In," organized by the Chicago National Novel Writing Month organization. I didn't get altogether that much writing done, but I got a cute NaNoWriMo sticker and knocked out about four hundred words. These were the rest of the writers:





I also had quite a productive week. Wednesday was MCC Night on campus. It's essentially an open house where we all get to showcase our departments for the community and prospective students. I'd volunteered to man the table with my officemate Lisa, and although we had a great time, our feet were in soooo much pain by the end of the night. Here are some of the shots I took during the event as well as the tremendously cool display boards I made (did you know that kids doing science projects no longer have to duct tape three poster boards together?! They come that way already now!!).








I also got to see Mom and Dad's gorgeous new bookcase. It was custom made and has space for lots of books (though probably not enough...) and two desk areas. I'm thinking that once they retire they'll open up their own detective agency, like a modern day Spade and Archer. Though one of them will not end up shot over espionage.




We did miss Rachel and Letty's visit to Milwaukee, though. The rest of the Power siblings and families headed up there to visit, and from a text they sent me on Saturday, they were having a great time. Trevor's heading down to Miami at the end of this month for an art fair, and we're hoping he'll be able to visit with Rae then. I wish I could work it out to piggy-back a trip down there, since he'll be gone from Sunday to Sunday, but it's the week before my last week of classes, and that might be a bit too hectic. You can all expect lonely calls from me and Henry that week as we drown ourselves in macaroni and cheese and stare longingly at pictures of Trevor.

And now that we've watched two back-to-back episodes of Mad Men's season finale (it was so good, but now we have to wait months for it to start again. And I'm not sure if we have the will power), I should most likely head off to sleep. So good night for now!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Getting Ready to Write a Novel



November is National Novel Writing Month, and one of the students in Writer's Block, our new creative writing club at school, suggested that we participate as a group. We thought it was a terrific idea, but that also means that now we each have to write a novel. I'm not so much worried about the rest of them; these young student are excited and can be motivated about things other than school work. But I--ME--also have to write a novel this month. And it's different than the 3-Day Novel Contest I took part in a couple of times oh-so many years ago. This one is actually, sort of, do-able. The timer started at midnight last night, or today, the 1st of November. By November 30, we each have to write 50,000 words of a novel. Yikes. So, rather than get started doing that tonight I did an awesome MLA format crash-course PowerPoint for my Comp 1 class tomorrow. Yes, that's correct: I procrastinated writing my novel with school work. Double-yikes. But I think I'm going to get it started tonight. I'm also going to take my computer to school tomorrow to see if that helps me work on the train in to campus. We'll see how this goes.

In non novel-related news, we had the New City Borks over for a ghoulish Halloween dinner last night. There was little ghoulish about it, though. I made Walnut Gruyere and Spinach Lasagne and a chocolate cake. I wrote "Boo!" on the cake with icing. But that was as scary as we got. Dan, Simona, and Maya, however, got all hot-dogged up for the holiday! Check them out:


I think that it's illegal for this level of cuteness to occur, so we might have to call the authorities. Simona took the photo of Dan and their little Maya-dog. She did not, however, send a picture of herself, so I can only assume that she was dressed as a dill pickle. Or, perhaps, a side of french fries. Simona, please send me a picture so our readers can see for themselves.

Well that's about it. I should close out now to try to start my novel. I guess. I should go. Now. N.o.w. Right. Now. bye.